Combine harvesters are used in agriculture to harvest a wide variety of seed containing plants, such as rice, soybeans, wheat, oats, barley, rye, and canola. In one common arrangement, a feederhouse between 1 and 2 m wide is disposed at the front of the combine harvester (hereinafter “combine”). The feederhouse receives cut crop material from a harvesting head and conveys it rearward into a feed beater. The feed beater is in the form of elongate laterally extending roller, the roller having projections extending from its outer surface, typically in the form of spiral blades on each end. As the roller of the feed beater rotates, these spiral blades engage the cut crop material and pull it rearward into a feed housing while simultaneously pulling it inward from the end of the feed beater toward a central region of the roller.
The reason the feed beater pulls the cut crop material inward towards a central region of the roller is because part of the function of the feed beater is to reduce the width of the cut crop material into a thicker mat in the central region of the feed beater and insert it into the narrow mouth of a feed housing that extends between the feed beater and the front end of the combine rotor.
Once received in the feed housing, spiral blades on the front end of the combine rotor pull the cut crop material rearward into a gap between the cylindrical rotor and the stationary, generally cylindrical rotor housing that surrounds the rotor.
One problem with this prior art arrangement is that the cut crop material is inserted primarily rearward into the central region of the housing. This prior art arrangement does not feed the rotor well, and as a result the cut crop material jams in the rotor housing and does not feed evenly into the space between the rotor and the rotor housing for the next stage in the threshing and separating process.
What is needed, therefore, is a feed beater arrangement that feeds the cut crop material rearward and laterally into the feed housing for better feeding into the gap between the rotor and the rotor housing. It is an object of this invention to provide such a feed beater arrangement.